I admit scattershot naivete. I admit to a strain of blind optimism, a sort of sporadic myopia, a weirdly sanguine tunnel vision that makes me somehow think that we as a species and a culture and as a mad gaggle of individual human souls who are coupled with functioning hunks of semi-rational gray matter, we must, at least occasionally, be learning something, ever-so-slightly advancing our awareness of those things on this planet that want to harm us and sicken us and even kill us, and therefore we can alter our behaviors accordingly.
I must be completely wrong. Because there it is, that violently obnoxious Wendy's burger commercial I stumbled across recently, apparently part of a larger and stranger ad campaign featuring the usual assortment of requisite sagging thick-waisted former frat dudes -- a group, by the way, that must be an entire category unto itself for Los Angeles casting agencies, given how many of them appear in all sorts of similar monosyllabic commercials for, say, trucks. Or beer. Or power tools. Et al.
These ads feature the same childish concept: All the dudes have bright red cartoon pigtails (a la the Wendy's mascot) where their receding hairline used to be, and in their thick fists they're maybe clutching a giant greasy burger and staring at it with a sort of desperate, animalistic lust you normally see from, say, secretly gay Idaho Republicans in airport restrooms. Or something.
But this particular ad offers something extra, something a bit more... extraordinary. The burger in question is something very special indeed. It is not your typical "value menu" item. It is not a Wendy's Single with Cheese, or whatever it's called down in noncomestible junk-food hell.
No, this insidious concoction is simply startling in its shameless toxicity, its ruthless attention to wanting you cancerous and morbidly obese and very, very dead as soon as goddamn possible, if not sooner.
The burger is this: two sickeningly brownish-gray, chemical-blasted 1/4-pound beeflike patties, intersliced with two slabs of neon-orange cheeselike substance, slathered with mayonnaise, all topped with the big kicker: six (yes, six) strips of bacon. Oh my, yes. It's like a giant middle finger to your heart.
This product's name? The "Baconator." You know, like "Terminator," only for, uh, a huge stack of cow/pig meat that celebrates your impending coronary/impotence/cancer with every bite. Genius.
Here is where I admit my confusion. Here is where a small but significant part of my brain (quietly, internally) explodes every time I see this commercial -- which, mercifully, isn't often, because I don't watch much TV and don't watch any weekend TV sports and therefore am never around when (I presume) this kind of product is target-marketed straight to their apparently very slovenly, apparently hugely unhealthy, largely illiterate audiences.
Wait, is that too harsh? Maybe. But as I watched this ad, a slew of questions flooded my naive brain and I found myself actually looking around my apartment, trying to find a sympathetic face, someone or something to share my stupefaction at what I was seeing.
Wait wait wait (I asked the wall), is this still legal? Do we still actually allow this sort of cultural tripe to be broadcast to the nation? Can fast-food companies still sell revolting chyme like this obesity-causing cancer-ready death-inducing product you shouldn't even feed to your dog, and no one is stopping them? Didn't we pass a law or something? Have the noxious fast-food titans not yet been forced to stop concocting vile products like this, or at least to dial down the garish marketing of their most ultra-toxic products, given how the vast majority of Americans have now learned (haven't they?) at least a tiny modicum about human health?
Put another, more pointed way: Haven't we moved past this by now?
After all, we've now had years -- decades, even -- of well-documented studies and health campaigns and even a handful of truth-in-advertising nutrition laws, endless media reports about the dangers of fat and chemicals and industrial feedlot beef, not to mention the launch of dozens of health magazines and the mixed-blessing triumph of the entire organic movement, right alongside pop culture hits like "Fast Food Nation" and "Super Size Me" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "Diet for a New America" and all the rest.
Hence, you'd think -- or at least, I thought -- something might have shifted by now. Alas, you would be, like me, completely wrong.
Yes, well do I know the brutish libertarian view of all this, which simply goes: If you're dumb enough to eat this garbage, you get what you deserve. Then again, such ideology doesn't stop us from passing laws -- or at least partially regulating -- vile corporations and products we know are hugely dangerous and stupid and which would happily kill us in our sleep. And, at least in some cases, we're better off for it.
Hell, we did it with telemarketing. One little much-needed law and boom, a national Do-Not-Call registry, and it actually mostly works and now all those vile cretins who used to call you during dinner to sell you carpet cleaning services now simply spam your e-mail account until it staggers and collapses and shuts down your e-mail server.
We did it with cigarette advertising, with booze, with seat belt laws, with gun advertising, with all sorts of products and services we know in our collective heart of hearts are either totally and shamelessly deadly and therefore should not be allowed free reign in the culture, or which we all agree really do need some sort of system of legal/ethical checks and balances (clean water, food additives, medicine, etc.) that the free market simply cannot provide on its own.
And yes, well do I know the cynical view, the one that says a law banning the creation or advertising of such deadly garbage like the Baconator probably wouldn't do much to stem the tide of willful ignorance in this country anyway, given our well-known epidemic of obesity and our proud, all-American culture of gluttony and excess. True enough.
But maybe I'll just stick with my original note of (blind?) confidence, that little bubble of ideological hope that progress has indeed been made and awareness of health and diet in this nation has indeed been nicely raised and the world is not, in fact, teeming with an army of manic Baconator-chomping frat guys.
Or better yet, maybe I should just stop watching TV altogether. Voila! No more Baconators! Easy.
I love it when he is disgusted by the things that also disgust me. He has a gift for such things.
When did we become a nation of ignorant, sloth-like fools? I am racking my brain to understand where it all went SO wrong on countless levels.
